Twitter API Restrictions Cut Off Tumblr Access

Twitter's API-access rampage continued this week, when it choked off Tumblr users from searching for friends via the micro-blogging site.

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Twitter's API access rampage continued this week, when it choked off Tumblr users from searching for friends via the micro-blogging site.

BuzzFeed first reported the news Wednesday, saying that Tumblr's Twitter connection had disappeared around 5 p.m. Eastern. Tumblr later confirmed.

"To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users' ability to 'Find Twitter Friends' on Tumblr," a spokeswoman for the blogging site said in a statement.

"Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets," she continued. "And we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter's first partners. While we're delighted by the response to our integrations with Facebook and Gmail, we are truly disappointed by Twitter's decision."

Twitter warned users last week that it will further crack down on developer access to its API, effective with the release of API version 1.1, coming soon. In the future, developers will have to follow certain rules to access Twitter content, including authentication and a limit on requests.

"To prevent malicious use of the Twitter API and gain understanding of what types of applications are accessing the API in order to evolve it to meet the needs of developers, it's important to have visibility into the activity on the Twitter API and the applications using the platform," Twitter product team director Michael Sippey wrote in a blog post last week.

When asked about the Tumblr changes, a Twitter spokeswoman said the company understands the value associated with Twitter's data, but declined to comment further on the Tumblr issue.

Twitter has not revealed whether other integrated sites will hit the same snags as LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tumblr. However, Twitter's Sippey said last week that his company reserves the right to revoke application keys from any developer who ships a pre-installed app without getting Twitter certification.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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